Search Tips and Tricks In Microsoft Outlook - Advanced Outlook Search Filters

### Advanced Search Tips in Microsoft Outlook: A Step-by-Step Guide

#### Introduction

Welcome to our channel! In this short video, we will walk you through some useful tips and tricks for performing advanced searches in Microsoft Outlook. We are using the latest version of Outlook from our Microsoft 365 subscription, which is similar to the one you might be using. Let’s dive right into it!

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#### The Search Bar: Your Gateway to Efficient Searching

You’ve probably noticed the search bar at the top of your Outlook window. This handy tool allows you to perform quick searches and access previous searches. For example, typing “rate cards” brings up 72 results. However, this is a broad search, meaning it returns all emails that contain any combination of the words "rate" and "cards."

To narrow things down, try enclosing your search terms in quotes (e.g., “rate cards”). This ensures Outlook searches for the exact phrase rather than individual words. Interestingly, this search isn’t case-sensitive—so whether you type “Rate Cards” or “rate cards,” you’ll get the same results.

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#### Excluding Words: A Powerful Tool

One of the most useful features in Microsoft Outlook (and even Google) is the ability to exclude specific words from your search. For instance, if you want to find emails containing “rate cards” but not “lyu,” simply add a hyphen (-) before the word you wish to exclude.

Let’s try it:

- Type `rate cards -lyu` in the search bar.

- Press Enter and see how the results narrow down—from 72 items, we’re now down to just six!

This feature is particularly useful when searching for emails from a specific sender or related to a particular topic without including irrelevant results.

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#### Searching Within Folders: Focus on Specific Areas

Sometimes, you might want to limit your search to a specific folder. For example, if you only want to search your inbox, click the arrow next to the search bar and select “Current Folder.” This will ensure that Outlook only searches within the selected folder.

If you’re in the inbox, by default, Outlook will search everywhere unless you explicitly choose otherwise. However, if you’re in a different folder (e.g., Sent Items), it will only search within that folder.

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#### Advanced Search: Drilling Down Deeper

For more complex searches, Outlook offers an advanced search option. To access this, click on the search bar, then go to **Search Tools > Advanced Find**.

Here’s how you can use it:

1. Type your search term (e.g., “rate card”).

2. Use the dropdown menu to decide where to search (e.g., in the subject field or the message body).

3. Check the box for **Match Case** if you want a case-sensitive search.

This feature allows you to be extremely granular in your searches, such as finding emails where someone was blind copied or where specific keywords appear.

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#### Message Size Filters: Tailoring Your Search Results

Another handy feature is the ability to filter emails based on their size. For example, if you want to find all emails containing “rate cards” that are less than 150KB, follow these steps:

1. Click on **Search Tools > Advanced Find**.

2. Add a condition for **Message Size**.

3. Enter your desired size range (e.g., `less than 150,000 bytes`—since 1 KB = 1,000 bytes).

This can be particularly useful if you’re looking for smaller attachments or need to prioritize email storage.

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#### Saving Your Searches: Revisit Them Easily

As you build your search queries, Outlook automatically saves them in the form of a search string at the top of the window. If you want to revisit a previous search, simply click on **Search Tools > Recent Searches**. This feature is incredibly helpful for quickly accessing frequently used searches without reconstructing them from scratch.

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#### Conclusion

Thank you for watching! We hope these tips help you make the most out of Outlook’s advanced search features. Don’t forget to give us a thumbs up if you found this video useful and subscribe for more content. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out directly at [www.t.ca](http://www.t.ca).

Happy searching, and we’ll see you in the next video! Bye-bye!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: engood day and welcome to the channel in this short video we are going to explain uh a number of tips and tricks for how to use Advanced searches in Microsoft Outlook now what we have here is a current build of Microsoft Outlook from our Microsoft 365 subscription probably a lot like you have so let's get to it you probably notice this little search bar on the top when you click in it uh a number of things happen one it shows you your previous searches and uh secondly you can just type in it so I'm going to type in rate cards because that's something I have a fair number of now you can see here this returned 72 items but this is what's called a broad search and what that means is it's these words used in any order uh so let's put a quote let's put quotes around them press enter and you'll see now uh it returns 13 items and if I scroll down through one of these emails I will be able to see the highlighted there it is R cards so you can see that that exact phrase is what's being returned now one of the weird things about this is this is not case sensitive so if I changes to rate cards it's still going to return the same 13 results we will show you how to perform a case sensitive search in just a minute but let's show you something else that's really neat uh when you're doing your search you can press the minus or the dash or hyphen whatever you want to call it and you can exclude words this is probably the most useful function in Microsoft search it also applies to Google in case you're doing Google searches by the way we'll leave that alone for the moment so let's say I want to search for rate cards that phrase but I don't want anything with uh messages with emails that contain the letters lyu so and that's because that's somebody's name like so let's click on that boom now I'm down to six pretty cool huh now let's say you just wanted it from a particular folder let's say just your inbox you can click the arrow at the at the left here and you can perform a search on the current folder so I often go into my asent items and do a search there and anywhere but the inbox by the way will default to doing just that current folder it'll only search in the current folder but if you're in it if you are in the inbox it will search everywhere unless you specifically say no no no just show me the current folders let's click on that and now we're down to two now one of the things that you may have noticed or you may not have is that when you went into the search box uh that the search ribbon came up and there are a number of very useful features here first you can say well let's get rid of the solu and now we're back to six but we've decided we only want the messages from Edgar so let's click on the from and we'll type in Edgar just his first name and bingo so the rest of this is pretty self-explanatory what's not clear and what's not self-explanatory is the Advanced find where you can do case sensitive searches now let's reset all of this and the easiest way to uh reset the search well is to click close search but the way I often do it is simply to select a different folder and then click back because it's just easier to randomly click something over here than it is to move my mouse up and click specifically on the closed search I have to pay more attention with that so we've got a nice new search here so let's click on search and click out of the search box and then go down to search tools and select Advanced find and this is where the cool stuff really lives so let's search for rate cards again actually I'll just search for rate card this time because there's a lot more with that now do I want to search in just the subject field no I want to search in the subject field and the message body so let's select that and again I'll go to more choices and select match case and I will select find now let's see what comes up my expectation is is a lot thousands now while we are in advanced find let's show you some advanced advanced search functions uh and then we'll show you a couple of easier things as well so let's start with uh the advanced Tab and select field and we can really drill down be extremely granular here we can get to you know who's just been blind copied on it so on and so forth so this is where all of the really advanced stuff is let's show you some of the less advanced stuff that you're probably going to use more day-to-day so I'm going to close the search and at the top I'll search for rate cards again and because that provides a smaller number of searches there we go 72 items is what showed up there that's great let's H click the drop down arrow here and you'll notice that I can again change this from this from the inbox to wherever but I can also add in a date range I can add in a subject line I you know I can look for other things but take a look at this uh as opposed to being you know really uh IT Tech Guy you can simply click on add more options here and you can search for things like the message size you can do it right here let's click apply Now message size is added to the left here and I can type in whatever size I want I can put it in a Range I could put in a specific number but most people aren't going to know exactly what size it is they just want to know it's large or small small or you know they have some concept of how large so I'm going to use the less than sign I want all messages that are less than uh now this is done in bytes and you you might okay bytes versus bits vers okay it gets confusing basically uh when you're looking at your numbers add a thousand that's probably what you're going to want to do so anything that's less than I want something that's less than 250 kilobytes well KB is a th000 so let's just add a th here let's do the search exact same search and you'll see now it changed to 34 uh it's still no I think it was a little smaller than that let's look for things that are less than 150,000 and boom I'm now down to 24 and I can just keep changing this and the last thing we want to show you is how to recall these searches because you can see as you've built up your search it builds up the search string at the top here so this is looking for rate cards with a message size of less than 150 ,000 bytes well that might not be easy for you to remember fortunately when you click on the search field at the top the search ribbon opens and you can see there's a cool little function here called recent searches so you click on that and it will take you back to your previous searches which is very handy so hey thanks for watching we really appreciate it and please give us a big thumbs up if you found it useful subscribe is also always appreciated and if you have any questions or concerns please get a hold of us directly at www. t.ca that's. t.ca or you can leave a question or a comment below and if we don't get back you somebody else will because on YouTube everybody has an opinion thanks and have a great day bye-byegood day and welcome to the channel in this short video we are going to explain uh a number of tips and tricks for how to use Advanced searches in Microsoft Outlook now what we have here is a current build of Microsoft Outlook from our Microsoft 365 subscription probably a lot like you have so let's get to it you probably notice this little search bar on the top when you click in it uh a number of things happen one it shows you your previous searches and uh secondly you can just type in it so I'm going to type in rate cards because that's something I have a fair number of now you can see here this returned 72 items but this is what's called a broad search and what that means is it's these words used in any order uh so let's put a quote let's put quotes around them press enter and you'll see now uh it returns 13 items and if I scroll down through one of these emails I will be able to see the highlighted there it is R cards so you can see that that exact phrase is what's being returned now one of the weird things about this is this is not case sensitive so if I changes to rate cards it's still going to return the same 13 results we will show you how to perform a case sensitive search in just a minute but let's show you something else that's really neat uh when you're doing your search you can press the minus or the dash or hyphen whatever you want to call it and you can exclude words this is probably the most useful function in Microsoft search it also applies to Google in case you're doing Google searches by the way we'll leave that alone for the moment so let's say I want to search for rate cards that phrase but I don't want anything with uh messages with emails that contain the letters lyu so and that's because that's somebody's name like so let's click on that boom now I'm down to six pretty cool huh now let's say you just wanted it from a particular folder let's say just your inbox you can click the arrow at the at the left here and you can perform a search on the current folder so I often go into my asent items and do a search there and anywhere but the inbox by the way will default to doing just that current folder it'll only search in the current folder but if you're in it if you are in the inbox it will search everywhere unless you specifically say no no no just show me the current folders let's click on that and now we're down to two now one of the things that you may have noticed or you may not have is that when you went into the search box uh that the search ribbon came up and there are a number of very useful features here first you can say well let's get rid of the solu and now we're back to six but we've decided we only want the messages from Edgar so let's click on the from and we'll type in Edgar just his first name and bingo so the rest of this is pretty self-explanatory what's not clear and what's not self-explanatory is the Advanced find where you can do case sensitive searches now let's reset all of this and the easiest way to uh reset the search well is to click close search but the way I often do it is simply to select a different folder and then click back because it's just easier to randomly click something over here than it is to move my mouse up and click specifically on the closed search I have to pay more attention with that so we've got a nice new search here so let's click on search and click out of the search box and then go down to search tools and select Advanced find and this is where the cool stuff really lives so let's search for rate cards again actually I'll just search for rate card this time because there's a lot more with that now do I want to search in just the subject field no I want to search in the subject field and the message body so let's select that and again I'll go to more choices and select match case and I will select find now let's see what comes up my expectation is is a lot thousands now while we are in advanced find let's show you some advanced advanced search functions uh and then we'll show you a couple of easier things as well so let's start with uh the advanced Tab and select field and we can really drill down be extremely granular here we can get to you know who's just been blind copied on it so on and so forth so this is where all of the really advanced stuff is let's show you some of the less advanced stuff that you're probably going to use more day-to-day so I'm going to close the search and at the top I'll search for rate cards again and because that provides a smaller number of searches there we go 72 items is what showed up there that's great let's H click the drop down arrow here and you'll notice that I can again change this from this from the inbox to wherever but I can also add in a date range I can add in a subject line I you know I can look for other things but take a look at this uh as opposed to being you know really uh IT Tech Guy you can simply click on add more options here and you can search for things like the message size you can do it right here let's click apply Now message size is added to the left here and I can type in whatever size I want I can put it in a Range I could put in a specific number but most people aren't going to know exactly what size it is they just want to know it's large or small small or you know they have some concept of how large so I'm going to use the less than sign I want all messages that are less than uh now this is done in bytes and you you might okay bytes versus bits vers okay it gets confusing basically uh when you're looking at your numbers add a thousand that's probably what you're going to want to do so anything that's less than I want something that's less than 250 kilobytes well KB is a th000 so let's just add a th here let's do the search exact same search and you'll see now it changed to 34 uh it's still no I think it was a little smaller than that let's look for things that are less than 150,000 and boom I'm now down to 24 and I can just keep changing this and the last thing we want to show you is how to recall these searches because you can see as you've built up your search it builds up the search string at the top here so this is looking for rate cards with a message size of less than 150 ,000 bytes well that might not be easy for you to remember fortunately when you click on the search field at the top the search ribbon opens and you can see there's a cool little function here called recent searches so you click on that and it will take you back to your previous searches which is very handy so hey thanks for watching we really appreciate it and please give us a big thumbs up if you found it useful subscribe is also always appreciated and if you have any questions or concerns please get a hold of us directly at www. t.ca that's. t.ca or you can leave a question or a comment below and if we don't get back you somebody else will because on YouTube everybody has an opinion thanks and have a great day bye-bye\n"